


Overworked Fever Dream

by sbuggbot



Category: SteamWorld Quest (Video Game)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22473859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbuggbot/pseuds/sbuggbot
Summary: She was practically facing off with her former professor alone, this wasn't right...Being sick messes with your dreams. I wrote fluffy fluff with a side of sad again and I cannot be stopped
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Overworked Fever Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I had a cold the later part of last week and that spurred me to develop this idea into an actual thing.

Galleo was knocked out and Armilly was frozen in time. The outside only offered the heavy snowfall and howling wind. Copernica was essentially all alone while facing off with her professor. 

She had put so, so much trust in Hyapathia. The professor had helped Copernica remain in the college and opened her eyes to a side of alchemy that wasn't exactly in the curriculum, but it was exactly the sort of stuff that made her enamored in the subject in the first place.

To discover this side of the professor, one that wanted little more than to abuse alchemy's capabilities for power….it quite frankly shattered Copernica's view of the world. She felt sick. Had Hyapathia always been this way?

She was shaking. It was scary, trying to do this on her own. Copernica wanted to curl up in a ball or at least hug herself but that would mean letting her guard down. She wasn’t  _ that  _ good with casting, to be able to do a bunch of spells without her book out. Certainly not while defending herself against a Master Alchemist.

She braced herself against a wave of ice particles her former professor conjured. She wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. As the wave passed, the time lock placed on Armilly expired and she flinched from feeling damage she took while locked. A moment later the knight succumbed to burns she had and collapsed.

Copernica was definitely alone now. She let her free hand drop and fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, trying to figure out her next move. There wasn’t much she  _ could  _ do, not with her only having the means to cast spells of only one element and Hyapathia having a reactive shield up. 

“Well, neophyte Copernica?” Hyapathia asked, cooly indifferent and not concerned in the slightest. Thorny vines were creeping across the room, like the ones that grew up the walls near the college gate. They seemed to be coming from the various vases of roses in the room. How was she doing that, no sane or decent alchemist could do that! “What’s your next move?”

The vines were starting to crawl all over her friends in their quest to get closer to Copernica. Instinctively she knew that she couldn’t let that happen; things would get very very bad if she did. She had to push the vines back before they swallowed up her friends or got to her. She set up a fire pillar in the hopes it would at least stall the vines (and maybe hit her professor too as a bonus?)

It fizzled. What?! Spells don’t fizzle! Certainly not fire spells, those came so easily to her! That hadn’t happened since she was a small child and not old enough to effectively cast! And the worst possible time to fizzle, too!

The vines entrapped her friends and Hyapathia conjured lightning. The freak was  _ laughing.  _ It was too much for Copernica to handle. She lost her grip on her book as the vines circled her ankles...

\-------------

Copernica woke up to the sensation of someone shaking her shoulder and saying her name. "Wake up, it's okay…" Shaking and clearly upset, she fixed her glasses (she fell asleep with them on again) and looked up at Galleo. "Hey, hey, it was just a bad dream," he murmured, pulling her into a big hug that swallowed her up in the best way. "Shhhh…."

Copernica was remembering now, as she sank into the hug: she worked herself too hard again and had gotten sick for her efforts. At pretty much everyone's insistence, she had been tucked in on the couch and told to rest. She must have dozed off.

Her head hurt, her body ached, and she had this persistent queasy feeling that always appeared whenever she didn't feel well, no matter what kind of illness Copernica actually had at the moment (it appeared to be a cold this time). And she was so  _ tired; _ if her heart hadn't been fluttering from the nightmare she just had, she would have tried to go back to sleep.

Galleo shifted and sat down next to Copernica so he could hug her without having to crouch down awkwardly. She didn’t seem ready to be released, not with the way she was still trembling and breathing hard. "Other than the nightmare, how're you doing?"

"Worse than when I first laid down," she groaned. Definitely not well. The only thing keeping her upright at the moment was Galleo’s hold on her. "Where'd Armilly go?"

"Outside," he said. "She got really restless but she didn't wanna accidentally wake you up." Judging by the clumsy clattering noise that came from outside a moment later, she hadn't gone far. "She's safe."

Hearing that Armilly was okay, Copernica let out a shaky, relieved sigh that led to a coughing fit. It did no favors for her throat. 

"Easy, easy," Galleo said, holding her steady (but angled  _ away  _ from him even though she was covering her cough. He didn't like it when his friends were sick and tried to help but also germs were icky.)

Once she stopped coughing, she slumped back and pulled on the blanket. "I got stuff to do," Copernica whined. 

"It can wait until you aren't a rag doll," Galleo said. She flinched at the hand rested on her forehead. "You're definitely running a temperature now," he noted. "You not keeping breakfast down wasn't a one-off thing."

"Mmph." She had tried to argue otherwise earlier but only managed to fool herself for a while. She couldn't deny the fact she wasn't well now.

Armilly came in and saw her sitting up with Galleo. "Coco, you're awake! Feeling any better?"

Copernica replied by sneezing into her blanket. That was not the response she intended to give, but it worked. Especially combined with her expression, which simply read 'ugh'.

Armilly gently rubbed the top of Copernica's head. "You gotta take care of yourself, silly."

"I'm trying," she grumbled. "I  _ was  _ trying to sleep but I had a nightmare about fighting a goth flamingo and losing and Galleo had to wake me up." She shuddered, although she wasn't sure if it was from the nightmare or from how uncomfortable she was at the moment. 

Armilly frowned, she knew how badly that incident left Copernica shaken. She didn't need to be imagining other worst-case scenarios, especially not right now. "Need more hugs?"

"Mhm."

She sat down on Copernica's other side. Maybe it didn't cure her, but being cozy and sandwiched between her best friends made being sick more tolerable.

"Feel better, ok?"

**Author's Note:**

> Exchange I unfortunately couldn't fit into the story:
> 
> Galleo: "Ew, don't sneeze on me!"  
> Copernica: "Then don't pin me against your body, you big oaf!"


End file.
